Mehmet Goren, the father of 15-year-old Muslim schoolgirl Tulay Goren, has
been convicted of her murder and sentenced to serve a minimum of 22 years
for the family "honour killing" in London.

Tulay, who had come to Britain from the Kurdish region of Turkey, was drugged, tortured and then killed by her father Mehmet Goren, over her relationship with an older man of whom Mehment Goren and his relations did not approve.

Although Tulay’s body has never been found, her father Mehmet Goren, 49, was found guilty of murder at the Old Bailey after a 10-week trial.

He was cleared of conspiracy to murder Halil Unal, Tulay’s former boyfriend who survived being attacked with an axe by Mehmet, two weeks after the schoolgirl vanished.

Mehmen Goren's older brother Ali and younger brother Cuma were each cleared of charges of murder and conspiracy to murder.

The trial heard how Tulay, who came to Britain at the age of 12, was assaulted by her father, a Shia Muslim, who was angered by her relationship with Mr Unal, who was twice her age and a Sunni Muslim.

In the weeks before her disappearance, Tulay ran away from home twice and personally reported two attacks on her by her father. Her boyfriend also reported an assault.

However, despite Tulay's refusal to go home, she was lured back three weeks later, in January 1999, and disappeared the next day.

After she was killed, it is thought her body was buried in the garden of the family home in Woodford Green, north London before being dug up and disposed of.

Mehment had been arrested when Tulay vanished on January 7 1999 but lied his way out of trouble and forced his family to do the same.

He was only brought to justice by the damning testimony of the mother and sister Tulay left behind.

Ten years after she vanished, her mother Hanim agreed to tell the court the truth about her violent and bigoted husband Mehmet.

In emotional scenes in court a sobbing Mrs Goren said: 'In the children's bedroom I saw Tulay lying on the floor face down.

"Her hands and her feet were tied. Her hands and her feet were all a purple black colour.

"Hatice cried and screamed and jumped on her and the two of us tried to untie her, and Tulay said: 'Mum don't untie me, I want to die'. In the meantime Mehmet had come from downstairs and said don't untie, don't touch he said."

Mrs Goren continued: "After that Mehmet said: 'So that she doesn't run away again I have tied her up'."

She also gave key evidence about the aftermath of the murder, in which she found knives missing from the kitchen, bin bags used up and the back garden of her home in Glastonbury Avenue, Woodford Green, dug over.

Hanim said she was 'suspicious' when she saw Mehmet's freshly laundered shirt, as he had never done the washing in more than 20 years of marriage.

She also noticed injuries to her husband's hands, including a large gash to one of his palms.

"On that day Mehmet told me on the phone that she ran away I didn't believe. I was thinking about this to myself. I had a feeling, I wondered maybe he tied her up in the house, maybe he was punishing her again somehow, I had that sort of feeling," she said.

In 2004 a new team of detectives looked at the case and previously ignored evidence was given far greater significance.

Changes in the law also allowed Mehment Goren's daughter Hatice to give her evidence from beyond the grave.

She died in a car smash in 2006, but explained in police in a video-taped interview how her father told her to kiss Tulay goodbye before she disappeared.

The Tulay murder verdicts follow a police investigation which saw detectives travel to Kurdistan to learn about honour killings. Turkish psychiatrists were then brought to give evidence on the issue as expert witnesses in a British court for the first time.

Their findings, coupled with a greater understanding of 'honour' violence, persuaded the Crown Prosecution Service to overturn a decision 10 years ago not to bring charges against Mehmet Goren over Tulay's disappearance.

It was only after greater awareness of the phenomenon of honour killings, that a new team of detectives began a reinvestigation five years ago. In a landmark investigation, police travelled to Kurdistan to learn about local "honour codes" as they built their case.

Honour killings came to prominence in 2002 when Heshu Yones, a 16-year-old Kurdish girl from Acton, west London, had her throat slit her father Abdalla, who hated her Western lifestyle and Lebanese Christian boyfriend.

Abdalla, who fled to Britain from Iraq, believed his daughter had ruined his family's reputation. He was jailed for life in 2003 after admitting murder.

In April 2005 Pakistani Samaira Nazir was murdered by her brother Azhar in front of the whole family because she fell in love with an asylum seeker.

In 2007 there were two further high profile convictions at the Old Bailey.

Banaz Mahmod, 20, was stripped, raped and finally garroted with a shoelace on the orders of her father Mahmod Mahmod.

Her body was then dumped a small suitcase and buried in a make-shift grave in a Birmingham garden under piles of rubbish, where it lay undiscovered for three months.

She too had fallen in love with the wrong man and was blamed for 'dishonouring' her family.

In 2007 her father and uncle Ali were jailed for life for her murder, along with a third man Mohammed Hama.

Also that year Sikh grandmother Bachan Athwal, then 70, and her son Sukhdave were convicted of organising the murder of his wife Surjit Kaur Athwal, 27, who is believed to have been strangled and dumped in a river during a trip to the Punjab in 1998.

According to statistics from the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) there are 12 suspected 'honour killings' in the UK each year.